Don't Take Life Cirrusly--Didactic Comedy with Cloud 9

Scanning director Brad J. Ranno's notes about the Spotlighter's Theater production of acclaimed English playwright Caryl Churchill's "Cloud 9," I was less than enthused.  With references to race, gender and feminism, weighty, stolid issues that "resonate in our social conscious" (ugh), I wondered, why can't a play just be fun? Instruct, but don't preach. Enlighten, but don't lecture. And above all, pleeeezzzz-ENTERTAIN.

Fortunately, Ms. Churchill doesn't disappoint. Born in 1938 the daughter of a film actress and a cartoonist, Churchill feeds her audiences heaping bowls of Life cereal dramatis. Here, try this, it's good for you, teaches you to see things through another's eyes and gain moral and ethical perspective yadayada...but like Mikey, you like it.

In Cloud 9, it is as though the scripts for each part were suddenly tossed in the air, the actors forced to grab whatever came to hand. Churchill casts men as women and children, women as gay men and boys, and then mixes the whole lot up again after intermission.

Happily for the audience, the Spotlighters company is up to the task, and one senses the actors are enjoying the opportunity to demonstrate their range. Richard Goldberg blows chauvinist bombast as the patriarchal, Queen-Country-and-St.-George Clive in Act I (set in 1880s British Colonial Africa), then trades his pith helmet and boots for a pink dress, red curls and cap guns as Cathy, a sort of Denise the Menance, in Act II (1979 London). Holly Gibbs is a ringer for post-menopause Queen Victoria at curtain's rise, only to be transformed into male gay gigolo Gerry at play's end.

And in another twist, despite the expanse of a full century, characters and their story lines follow act to act. Betty, played by Michael Zemarel in Act I, is Clive's repressed wife,  yearning to live "dangerously," but forced to define her identity as dictated by Clive, the personification of 19^th century social mores. Played by Stephanie Ranno in Act II (who played Ellen and Mrs. Saunders in Act I...following all this?), Betty is now middle aged, free of Clive and free to get in touch with herself-quite literally and in more ways than one.

While sexuality is a strong theme here, as Churchill simmers her characters in all manner of unrequited lusts, it is only a symbol for the need for unfettered self-expression, a right that faces challenges in every era, from the days of slavery to disco. Ultimately, the play is about everyone's struggle to find a bit of happiness, whether with one's self or with another. And when we find that happiness, as Betty and her son Edward discover by play's end, that's heaven. That's a recliner seat on Cloud 9.

Cloud 9 runs through March 8, 2009, Friday-Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. and one Thursday performance at the Spotlighters Theater, 817 St. Paul Street in downtown Baltimore City. Call 410-752-1225 or visit www.spotlighters.org. Tickets are $18 for adults, $15 for seniors (ages 60+) and students (under age 18 or with valid student ID).

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